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Moodle 2: Gradebook: Weighting Categories and Items

General Information

You can use weights to determine what percentage or proportion that a gradebook category or item will count toward the calculation of the final grade. You can create gradebook categories and items, and set their weights in the Gradebook Simple View.

To Set Weights for Categories and Items Within the Simple View

1. Open your gradebook in Simple View. For details on how to do this: see GROK article #16157, Gradebook: Simple View.

2. Create categories and items.

For information about how to create Gradebook Items, see GROK article #16653, Gradebook: Creating Graded Items.

For information about how to create Gradebook Categories, see GROK article #16654, Gradebook: Creating Categories.

3. Set the Aggregation method for the parent category to Custom Weights. The parent category is the category that contains the item or lower level category. You can have multiple levels of sub-categories, each with its own aggregation method. The overall course category (named with the name of your course) is the parent category for any categories or items you add to a blank gradebook.

4. Weight values are relative proportions that apply to each item or sub-category in a parent category. If all weights are the same value, the weighted items or sub-categories will be averaged equally. If all of the weights within a parent category add up to 100, (or 1.00 if you are using decimals,) then the weight values will be the equivalent of setting percent values.

5. When finished click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the editor. Before saving take note of particular notes below image.

Note 1 - Items within a sub-category may also be weighted if the sub-category's aggregation method is also set to "Custom Weights." In this example, the "Instructor's Grade" will count for 3 times more than the "Group Member Grade."

Note 2 - Items that have the same weight within a parent category will be averaged equally.

Note 4 - In this example, the grade item "Final Exam" will count as twice the value of the "Midterm Exam."

Note 5 - If there is only one item in a category, that item will count as 100% of that category total, regardless of the weight that is set.

Note 6 - For the weights to apply properly, grades must be entered for each graded item. All categories must contain at least one graded item. Items and categories that do not have grades will be excluded from the calculations. For example, if a gradebook has 4 categories that are weighted as 25, but one of the categories has no grades entered, then the remaining categories will in fact count for 33% of the final grade, not the expected 25%.

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